CME Group drops suit challenging swap-data repository rules

Regulations were proposed under Dodd-Frank

CME Group Inc., owner of the world’s largest futures market, dropped a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s new rules on trade-data reporting after the agency backed away from the requirements.

CME, in a filing today in federal court in Washington, said it was dismissing the case at least for now that sought to block the agency’s cleared-swaps reporting regulations under the Dodd-Frank Act financial reform legislation. Yesterday, the agency amended one policy and said it’s seeking public comment on how CME proposes to report swap data.

“We hope the CFTC will reconsider in the coming months whether these redundant rules are necessary and appropriate at all or could be improved to address better the reporting of cleared swaps data,” Laurie Bischel, a CME Group spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.

CME sued the commission on Nov. 8 seeking a permanent injunction against rules requiring registered derivatives- clearing organizations, such as itself, to provide nonpublic reports of cleared swap transactions to a new swap data repository established under the act.

Yesterday, the commission withdrew part of a document governing how trade price and volume information is routed to new databases under the Dodd-Frank Act. The agency also sought comment yesterday on CME’s proposed policy of having data for trades guaranteed by its clearinghouse sent to its own so-called swap-data repository.

The case is Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. v. U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 12-cv-01820, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).